"The reading in Cod. Hauk., seið hon hvars hon kunni, seið hon hugleikin, evidently has some "emendator" to thank for its existence who did not understand the passage and wished to substitute something easily understood for the obscure lines he thought he had found.
From all this follows that Leikin is either a side-figure to the daughter of Loki, and like her in all respects, or she and the Loki-daughter are one and the same person. To determine the question whether they are identical, we must observe (1) the definitely representative manner in which Völuspá, by the use of the name Leikin, makes the possessor of this name a mythic person, who visits men with diseases and death; (2) the manner in which Ynglingatal characterises the activity of Loki's daughter with a person doomed to die from disease; she makes him leikinn, an expression which, without doubt, is in its sense connected with the feminine name Leikn, and which was preserved in the vernacular far down in Christian times, and there designated a supernatural visitation bringing the symptoms of mental or physical illness; (3) the Christian popular tradition in which the deformed and disease-bringing horse, which Leikin rides in the myth, is represented as the steed of "death" or "Hel"; (4) that change of meaning by which the name Hel, which in the mythical poems of the Elder Edda designates the whole heathen realm of death, and especially its regions of bliss, or their queen, got to mean the abode of torture and misery and its ruler - a transmutation by which the name Hel, as in Gylfaginning and in the Slesvik traditions, was transferred from Urd to Loki's daughter.
Finally, it should be observed that it is told of Leikin, as of Loki's daughter, that she once fared badly at the hands of the gods, who did not, however, take her life. Loki's daughter is not slain, but is cast into Niflhel (Gylfaginning 34). From that time she is gnúpleit - that is to say, she has a stooping form, as if her bones had been broken and were unable to keep her in an upright position. Leikin is not slain, but gets her legs broken.
All that we learn of Leikin thus points to the Loki-maid, the Hel, not of the myth, but of Christian tradition."
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"The reading in Cod. Hauk., seið hon hvars hon kunni, seið hon hugleikin, evidently has some "emendator" to thank for its existence who did not understand the passage and wished to substitute something easily understood for the obscure lines he thought he had found.
From all this follows that Leikin is either a side-figure to the daughter of Loki, and like her in all respects, or she and the Loki-daughter are one and the same person. To determine the question whether they are identical, we must observe (1) the definitely representative manner in which Völuspá, by the use of the name Leikin, makes the possessor of this name a mythic person, who visits men with diseases and death; (2) the manner in which Ynglingatal characterises the activity of Loki's daughter with a person doomed to die from disease; she makes him leikinn, an expression which, without doubt, is in its sense connected with the feminine name Leikn, and which was preserved in the vernacular far down in Christian times, and there designated a supernatural visitation bringing the symptoms of mental or physical illness; (3) the Christian popular tradition in which the deformed and disease-bringing horse, which Leikin rides in the myth, is represented as the steed of "death" or "Hel"; (4) that change of meaning by which the name Hel, which in the mythical poems of the Elder Edda designates the whole heathen realm of death, and especially its regions of bliss, or their queen, got to mean the abode of torture and misery and its ruler - a transmutation by which the name Hel, as in Gylfaginning and in the Slesvik traditions, was transferred from Urd to Loki's daughter.
Finally, it should be observed that it is told of Leikin, as of Loki's daughter, that she once fared badly at the hands of the gods, who did not, however, take her life. Loki's daughter is not slain, but is cast into Niflhel (Gylfaginning 34). From that time she is gnúpleit - that is to say, she has a stooping form, as if her bones had been broken and were unable to keep her in an upright position. Leikin is not slain, but gets her legs broken.
All that we learn of Leikin thus points to the Loki-maid, the Hel, not of the myth, but of Christian tradition."
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